


Everything That Dies

by panharmonium



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Ensemble Cast, Gen, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:48:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25314835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panharmonium/pseuds/panharmonium
Summary: Even Merlin assumes it will only be Camelot’s magic that lives and dies and lives again.Merlin is wrong.
Relationships: Merlin & Will (Merlin)
Comments: 28
Kudos: 83





	Everything That Dies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LembraginiCC](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LembraginiCC/gifts).



> Written as giftfic for my awesome friend @merlinobsessionist, who sent me the following message about Will being reincarnated along with the rest of the Camelot crew:
>
>> _so i had this thought abt merlin, okay so there are lots of reincarnation fics and sometimes more people than arthur come back! and i just had this image of will showing up out of nowhere, and merlin looking at him, struck dumb almost, and will is just like 'merlin, mate, i rly don’t care for this destiny shit' and they laugh/cry and merlin runs at him and they hug and merlin LIFTS him off the ground and spins and its just happy days bro._   
> 
> 
> I was DELIGHTED - more so than I even realized at first, I guess, because my one-paragraph reply somehow morphed into something much bigger, and became a rough draft for this now-finished story, the premise of which is the following: as far as I'm concerned, the only reason Will wouldn’t appear in a reincarnation scenario is because reincarnation runs in reverse and he simply hasn’t shown up yet. I don’t accept any other explanation. 
> 
> Merlin deserves to have his best friend returned to him. By the end of this show, he has already given up everything he could have had or done or been for someone else’s sake, for a thankless mission that ultimately rewarded him with nothing. It isn’t fair for his final ‘happy ending’ to do nothing but further affirm the message that Camelot was the only thing about his life that mattered.
> 
> So. Without further ado - @merlinobsessionist, thank you so much for being such a great friend, fic-inspirer, and fervent enabler of my Respect Will 2k20 campaign. Here’s a story for you.
> 
> [Title is courtesy of the Matthew and the Atlas [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk8hNR4ivZY) by the same name.]
> 
> Edit 9/16/2020 - The amazing @oldwaylaid on tumblr has taken it upon himself to illustrate a number of scenes from this fic! Please, after you've finished reading, go and swoon over his art, because that is exactly what I have been doing for weeks. Links can be found here: [one](https://oldwaylaid.tumblr.com/post/627395865823363072/ive-fulfilled-my-destiny-you-didnt-fulfill), [two](https://oldwaylaid.tumblr.com/post/628305701688803329/merlins-email-inbox-pings-him-multiple-times-a), [three](https://oldwaylaid.tumblr.com/post/628591920581689344/merlin-even-after-he-agrees-that-will-is), [four](https://oldwaylaid.tumblr.com/post/629429121565523968/what-eventually-gets-merlin-and-will-out-of-their). <3

Magic is not merciful.

Merlin knows this. Years of theoretical study and the slap of cold, hard experience have taught him not to ask the Old Religion for favors. Magic is not interested in people, not in that way. It is not merciful or merciless, just or unjust, good or un-good. It does not care who lives and who dies. It does not know the difference between a doe in the trees and a hunter and his hound; it swallows all three indiscriminately and breaks their bodies down to the same dark soil. The Old Religion is a creaking, weathered wheel turning over and over on itself in the current of a churning river, life over death over life over death over life.

Merlin knows that magic is not merciful; it simply _is_. But he also knows that magic flows toward balance, the same way a river flows to the sea. 

And occasionally - when the scales begin to tip - magic can still surprise him.

***

_I really don’t care for this destiny shit._

Merlin hasn’t done accidental magic for over a millennium and a half, but in the space between one thunderous heartbeat and the next, the pavement under his feet cracks into a fractured spider web of crumbling concrete, and along each fissure blooms a tangled vein of grass, vividly green and decidedly un-urban and _definitely_ not the result of any conceivable natural process.

“You haven’t changed one ruddy bit,” Will says, unimpressed. “You _numpty._ It’s broad daylight.”

Merlin wants to say that Will hasn’t changed one ruddy bit either, because no one else on earth could manage to show up fifteen centuries after their supposedly permanent expulsion from this plane of existence and still make Merlin want to strangle them within seconds, but it comes out like “mmmfffm mfmf” because Merlin _is_ sort of strangling Will, after all, with a hug, and his face is mashed into Will’s clothes, and it's not his fault he can't enunciate properly with a mouthful of t-shirt.

(It's not his fault he can’t enunciate properly when he's crying, either, but that’s nobody’s business.)

***

Merlin, after Will reappears, is _insufferable_ for weeks on end. 

That's Will's opinion, at least. Merlin maintains that Will is exaggerating, but Will, when challenged, retorts, “Yesterday when I woke up I cracked my skull on your nose ‘cos you were hanging over me while I was having a nap, Merlin; you’ve gone _completely_ round the bed - ”

Later, maybe, Merlin will admit that perhaps Will has a point, and that maybe Merlin was being just a little bit overbearing. 

But here and now, in the beginning, Merlin spends most of his time treading on the back of Will’s shoes, or sitting too close to him on the sofa (“on _top_ of me, Merlin,” Will clarifies, irritably, “you’re _on top of_ _me_ \- ”), or, bizarrely, thinking about zippers, which last item appears to make very little sense on the face of it but is actually perfectly reasonable in Merlin's eyes, given that he is currently in the market for something that will allow him to keep Will within his line of sight at all times. Zippers seem to have potential, at first, given that a precise application of their tightly interlocking teeth ought to be able to stop Will from going anywhere or doing anything without Merlin's supervision, though extreme resistance from Will and several failed attempts at magicking something functional together on Merlin's part eventually lead Merlin to concede that zipping two people together is not what these clever little inventions were designed to do and also apparently not a feature that the manufacturers are interested in developing. 

Merlin is willing to make sacrifices in the name of precautionary surveillance, though, and he resolves to master the art of shadowing Will’s every move even without the aid of specialized fastening apparatuses. For some unfathomable reason, Will finds this annoying, but Merlin tries to explain away his friend's marked ingratitude by convincing himself that Will's reluctance to follow perfectly reasonable, safety-related rules is just a consequence of his natural anti-authoritarian streak, and not, in fact, a reaction to the fact that Merlin has gone completely round the twist.

Merlin is _not_ being unreasonable. He’s not. 

It’s a dangerous world out there. You can’t be too careful. 

***

Cars, of course, are right out.

“What are you doing?” asks Merlin, with sudden alarm.

Will looks blankly at Merlin over the hood of the car. “Getting in?”

“Oh, no. You can’t sit there.”

“Can’t I? I’m driving.”

“No.”

“I’m not driving?”

“No.”

“You’re driving, then.”

“No.”

Will stares at him. “I don’t understand. Who’s driving?”

Merlin hesitates, then simply repeats, “...No.”

“Aren't we supposed to be doing your groceries?”

"No."

"No? This morning you said - "

“Look, I just think, you know, let’s just...skip it.”

“Merlin,” Will says, with teeth-gritting patience, “you have no toilet paper.”

"So?"

"What do you mean, 'so'? What are you going to use, a tea towel?"

Merlin makes a face. “Since when are you so committed to toilet paper?”

“Since we all popped into the twenty-first century, Merlin.”

"You used to be satisfied with the simple life."

"I also used to piss in a ditch. Now get in. I'm driving."

"No!" Merlin yelps, and magicks the doors locked.

***

Food is suspect, as well.

“What are you doing?”

“...Eating.”

“You’ve not had that before.”

“So?”

Merlin hesitates. “Do you know allergies are hundreds of times more common now than they were when we - ”

“Merlin - ”

“I’m only saying that if you haven’t tried it before - ”

“Merlin - ”

“- that maybe I should just - ”

“Merlin, if you try to take this plate away from me I'm dumping the sticky bit all over your trousers.”

***

Anything, really, is cause for extra caution.

"What are you doing?” Merlin says, peering suspiciously around the kitchen doorway. 

Will groans. “Nothing, Merlin.”

“You got up.”

“So?”

“Where are you going?”

“...The loo, Merlin.”

***

Will tries his best to be patient, but unfortunately patience has never been one of his strong suits, so Merlin’s fingers do end up getting slammed in a number of bathroom doors before he manages to finally (grudgingly) admit that Will has, in point of fact, always been rather more self-sufficient than Merlin himself, and that he has also, in general, been pretty good about not getting himself killed in stupid accidents, when he isn’t leaping in front of a crossbow to save someone else's life.

“So,” Merlin concedes, “as long as no one’s actively trying to kill you - ”

“Can’t promise you that,” Will interrupts around a mouthful of toast. “Something about me puts people’s backs right up, Merlin; I know a couple of fellows who’d be well pleased if I did drop dead of a freak nectarine allergy - ”

“ - then I _suppose_ ,” Merlin continues, gritting his teeth, “you’ll probably be fine.”

***

Merlin, after this, is proud of himself for deciding to be such a grown-up, and he decides that his insufferable period ends there. 

The rest of his friends disagree, even if they never say so to Merlin’s face, because Merlin, who has spent the last 1500 years diligently serving someone else's interests, has now suddenly reacquired the one thing in his life that was ever just his, and the simple fact of the matter is that Will’s reappearance, welcome as it is, turns Merlin temporarily feral.

Merlin, even after he agrees that Will is probably capable of walking down to the corner shop without an escort, goes virtually everywhere at Will’s elbow, and he comes home at Will's side, and he goes to bed on the living room floor because that’s where he and Will are lying by the time they talk themselves out in the middle of the night, sleepy and carelessly sprawled out on the carpet. The two of them are always busy, but only with each other, and Merlin gleefully declines invitations to make plans with any of his other friends, because he is already doing exactly what he wants to do, and he will continue to do so for exactly as long as he wants to do it, and now it is everybody else’s turn to _wait_. 

Said other friends, wondering if they'll ever see him again, start asking him if he wants to come round, and he doesn’t even bother with ‘ _oh, i’m a bit busy atm';_ he just replies _no_ and then conveniently loses his phone behind the couch.

Gwen is the only one who ever gets a clarifying text after one of these episodes. It reads simply, _"i_ _didn’t mean that in a nasty way."_ She sends him back a little purple flower in response, because of course she knows perfectly well he didn’t mean anything by it- she _laughed_ when she got his original message. 

(She thinks it’s nice to hear Merlin using the word _no_ as a complete sentence, actually.)

(She knew him the longest, after everything went to hell. By now, they understand each other.)

***

Most of Merlin’s friends don’t bother him too much after a first failed attempt at connecting, because they can take a hint, and they have their own lives to live, and they assume they’ll just see Merlin when he wants to see them.

A select few, however, are accustomed to getting everything they want, very quickly, almost all of the time, and those people (person) have spent a formative chunk of their lives relying on Merlin to (literally) drag them out of bed every morning, so those people (person) turn out to be a bit more persistent.

Merlin’s email inbox pings him multiple times a day, displaying increasingly curious and impatient variations on “where are u,” until Merlin activates his out-of-office reply feature and sets the bounce-back message to “at the tavern.” His mobile rings incessantly, until he magicks it to redirect all incoming calls to an in-home cleaning service. The landline starts ringing then as well, at which point Will picks up the phone and says, utterly serious, “We’re not home,” while Merlin, in the background, cackles, completely audible and utterly unsubtle.

Much later, when Merlin has calmed down enough to rejoin society, Arthur will grumble about this, because he doesn’t appreciate being mocked, thank you very much (especially not by “ _that_ fellow”), but Will isn’t the least bit put out by Arthur's bellyaching. 

“I wasn’t taking the piss, mate,” Will says, quite obviously doing just that. “I thought you might fall for it, is all.”

Arthur, huffy: “Why in god’s name would you think I would believe such an _obvious_ _lie_?”

Will:

***

What eventually gets Merlin and Will out of their self-imposed quarantine is not, in fact, Arthur’s exhaustive flurry of attempts to hassle Merlin by phone, email, and carrier pigeon, but rather a simple text from Gwaine, which, in true Gwaine fashion, asks no questions and makes no demands, but contains instead a single blurry photo of what might be Elyan and Percival looking disappointed and droopy in front of some kind of beach, though the sky behind them looks very grey and the lens of the camera appears to be smeared with raindrops.

_> >freak thunderstorms on beach day/weatherman said no chance???  
>>NOT ON, you funky little wizard_

Merlin snorts and sets his phone aside. He doesn't feel any particular need to explain once again that he does not, in fact, control the weather (well - not usually, anyhow; there was that one time, but on the whole, natural forces are not to be trifled with). Then, as quickly as he put the text out of his mind, he snaps up the phone again, struck by a thrill of realization. “ _Gwaine_ ,” he breathes, suddenly consumed with gleeful anticipation.

“Wossat?” Will asks from the other side of the table, barefoot and pyjama-clad.

“We’re going out,” Merlin says, popping up from his chair and pushing Will out of his seat. “Put your shoes on.” 

Will allows Merlin to hustle him out of the kitchen, grumbling, “Can I put my clothes on, too, or are we trying to be somewhere yesterday?”

“You can put your clothes on,” Merlin says, shoving Will into the living room. “I want you to meet somebody.”

Will puts on the brakes immediately, stopping them both short in the doorway to the hall. “Who?”

“A friend of mine.”

“What friend?” 

Merlin pauses, pinned in place by Will's wary expression. Will doesn’t know any of Merlin’s other people, and he claims he doesn’t care to, ostensibly because he's "got enough friends already,” but Merlin knows the real problem isn’t that Will’s contact list is somehow too chock-full to accommodate another couple of acquaintances. It's that for Will, the picture-plastered refrigerator in Merlin’s kitchen is a disquieting, uneasy mystery, a puzzle Will on some level doesn’t believe he fits into. 

Merlin can’t blame him for feeling that way. It’s not like Merlin did much to disabuse him of that notion, in their old life. 

“Just a friend,” Merlin decides, keeping it simple. “Gwaine. You’ll like him.”

“I don’t know him."

Merlin spins Will around by the shoulders and points him in the direction of the bedroom. “Trust me," he says. "You want to.”

***

 _Don’t leave,_ Merlin texts Gwaine afterwards, while Will is getting dressed. _Stay at the beach._

Merlin’s phone buzzes in response. _It’s tipping down out here._

Merlin leans against the warm, rain-spattered glass of the window, checking the sky, which is grey still, but brightening. Across the room, Will emerges from the bedroom, shoes in hand.

 _Don’t bother about the weather,_ Merlin types.

 _Why?_

Gwaine’s reply is almost instantaneous, but Merlin ignores it for a moment, watching as Will crouches and does up his laces. It's a familiar enough sight, for Merlin, who spent years of his old life watching Will’s fingers fly over more complicated knots than the bow in a pair of trainers. Double-half hitches for calving ropes, halter loops for wayward goats, ring knots draped over gateposts and snap-releases for pulling frisky legs up and out of kicking range - Will was always good at that sort of thing, at anything handsy. It was how he talked, when he finally ran out of things to say with his mouth, his fingers always moving, tying sheaves of grain together or tilling soil or turning trees into harrows and haycarts and hundreds of yards of rough-hewn fencing. He always had sawdust in the hem of his trousers, and splinters in his hands, and - for far too long a time - a little frowny crease in the center of his brow.

 _Why?_ Gwaine’s inquiry is still glowing up at Merlin.

Merlin watches Will double-knot his second shoe. Will is tidier now, and his hands are less scarred, but his fingers move as surely as they always have, and even if his forehead sometimes still sports that same little uncertain crinkle, Merlin has caught Will in a silly grin once or twice, too.

Merlin ducks his head and taps out his answer.

_I think things are looking up._

***

“You were talking to Lancelot.”

It gives Merlin an indescribably warm feeling to see Will and Lancelot chatting together in Gwen’s back garden. Lancelot is hardly ever in town these days, and Merlin dragged Will out to this to-do specifically because if there was one event Lancelot would show up to this year, it was Gwen’s birthday. But Will still hasn’t fallen into the rhythm of these things, and he is liable, lately, to slink away to the sidelines, to less well-tended patches of plants illuminated only by the twinkle lights wound into Gwen’s fencing. Will is startlingly uncertain now, in a way that would have shocked Merlin in another life, though these days Merlin just takes it in stride, joining Will on whatever patch of grass he’s chosen for himself and sharing a paper plate of food between them, and eventually the rest of the party will migrate to their position, because people follow Merlin like a beacon in the night, even into dark corners.

Will nods in response. “Yeah, I was.”

Eloquent, as usual. Merlin prods him in the arm. “What do you think of him, then?”

“I’ve only just met the man.”

“I’ve never known that to stop you having an opinion.”

Will sighs. “He seems fine, Merlin.”

On the other side of the garden, Elyan is building up the firepit, breaking up sticks for kindling. Arthur sits alongside, watching Lancelot, who watches Gwen, who is beaming in her bright yellow sundress, though she, too, is watching both of her observers, whenever they aren’t watching her. 

None of them look troubled, exactly. Just thoughtful. 

“He seemed to know who I was,” Will says suddenly, surprising Merlin by revisiting the subject.

“Well, he does, a bit," Merlin admits. "He’s my friend, you know. He’s heard of you.”

The familiar crinkle in Will's forehead deepens. “The rest of your friends hadn’t heard of me.”

The rest of those friends are, at the moment, pestering Leon to return a confiscated can of lighter fluid to Elyan, all swearing on their oaths that the (former) blacksmith isn’t planning on using it for any forge-appropriate stunts. 

“Lancelot’s different,” Merlin says, after a pause. “It was different with him.”

“How different?”

Gwaine uses a pair of tongs to pop the can of lighter fluid out of Leon’s hands, tossing the container to Arthur, who tosses it to Lancelot, who looks almost surprised at being included.

“Well...” Merlin says. “He knew me. Not like the rest of that lot, I mean.” He glances at Will. “Like you.”

Will eyes Lancelot calculatingly.

“I couldn’t tell them about you,” Merlin says in a quieter voice. “They wouldn’t have understood.”

Will watches Lancelot lob the can of lighter fluid to Percival, who slings it back to Elyan, who freezes mid-pour when Gwen hollers his name. “Well, that’s all right, then,” Will murmurs, almost to himself. Then he turns back to Merlin, lifting an eyebrow. “How in the hell did that happen, then?”

“It was sort of an accident.”

“I thought you said Gaius was an accident.”

“Well, yeah, that, too.”

A disbelieving laugh bursts out of Will’s mouth. It’s loud and bell-bright, and it turns Gwen’s head from where she stands over by the picnic table, setting out a plate of desserts. She catches Merlin’s eye and smiles.

“Right, then,” Will says, recovering himself. “I’ll have to give this Lancelot bloke another go, then.”

“Please do,” Merlin says. “You should. He’s worth it.”

Will nods to himself, considering Lancelot for a moment. “A whole two of us, is it?”

Merlin nods.

“We’ve got nearly enough people to start ourselves a little Society now.”

“A small one.”

“Very small,” Will agrees. “Very exclusive." 

For a moment, that's the end of it. And then Will suddenly looks uncomfortable. “I mean - not that - I’m not saying...well. Cat’s out of the bag now, obviously, so it doesn’t matter - ”

Merlin shakes his head. “No,” he interrupts, stopping Will mid-sentence. 

Will’s gaze flickers uncertainly between Merlin and the group clustered around the firepit. “No? I thought you said - ”

“ _No_ ,” Merlin repeats, his voice quiet but uncompromising, “it matters. Don’t ever think that, Will. You have no idea.”

Will flushes and diverts his attention to the grass underfoot, and Merlin decides to leave the subject there, for now, allowing Will a moment to be flustered. Someday, maybe, it will take more than the barest scrap of appreciation to turn Will sixteen shades of red, but Will was always like this at home, too, quick to shut himself down, easy for Merlin to embarrass, taken off guard by unfiltered affection and squirming at too much sincerity, unable to conceive of himself as something anyone would ever need or want in a way that wasn’t contingent upon his being an extra pair of hands in the field. 

Merlin did not do much to correct that impression back then, he knows. But he’s been given a gift, now, a chance to amend his first and ugliest mistake, and he is going to be deliberate about this unexpected chance at atonement. He has promised himself that he will be better, braver. He will be less selfish. More patient. Gaius always said that allowing sufficient time for regrowth was the only surefire way to set a broken bone, and Merlin doesn’t care if it takes him another 1500 years - he owes Will too much to offer him anything less.

Will returns his attention to the group on the patio, determinedly keeping his eyes focused anywhere but Merlin’s face. “ _That_ looks like a torch in a hayloft,” he mutters, watching Arthur, Gwen, and Lancelot’s unfolding dramedy of longing looks. “Long story there, I take it?”

Merlin smiles. “I’ll tell you all about it, I promise. You might want to clear your schedule for a week or two, though.”

Will shrugs and says, “I’m not going anywhere." But then he looks sideways at Merlin, hesitating on the edge of an unasked question.

Merlin does not make him wait. Not this time. Not ever again. 

“Neither am I,” Merlin says, and settles in to watch Elyan blow something up.

***

Elyan's bonfires are not the only explosive things in the world, however. 

Time, as it turns out, has not blunted Will’s sharp edges in the slightest, and those associated with his tongue have softened least of all. Now that he has caught up on a significant amount of information, he's formulated a number of angry opinions about the reeking cow pie Merlin stepped into after he went to Camelot, and every week seems to present him with something new to stew over, leading to episodes of simmering surliness which occasionally boil over into bitter arguments. 

Thankfully, Will rarely makes his blunt and unflattering observations in front of Merlin’s other friends, but Merlin is all too aware that this is not because Will is even the slightest bit afraid to speak his mind, but rather because he is profoundly disinterested in anything Merlin’s Camelot compatriots might have to say in their own defenses. Will _does_ care what Merlin has to say, up to a point, even if he thinks ninety percent of it is “cow shyte, Merlin, don’t try to feed me that rubbish,” but even Merlin can’t escape Will's ire by offering explanations or placations or rationalizations of the triumph of the Ultimate Good; Will simply doesn’t care about "destiny" or the entities that direct its currents, and he tells Merlin so, every time Merlin tries to defend the Powers That Be or justify the part he himself played in their story. 

[^actual footage of Will and Merlin in the twenty-first century.]

Someday in the future, the two of them will realize that they don’t actually want to accidentally (on purpose?) murder each other out of sheer frustration, so they decide they are only allowed to argue about this topic twice a year. 

For now, though, Will can’t shut up, and Merlin can’t let some of Will’s more mouthy comments pass, and they lock horns every other week on things neither of them have the ability to change.

It’s exhausting, a little bit, and they sometimes get into rip-roaring rows which are terribly worrisome for other people (‘oh dear, it’s really over for them this time, isn’t it?’), but neither Will nor Merlin fret over this like the rest of their circle does. They’ve known each other too long, and rowed with each other too often. Fighting with one another is a time-honored tradition for them, not something to be frightened of. And these are not trifling, unnecessary tiffs they are having, after all. These are necessary evils, lanced abscesses, scoured wounds. These are cleansings, bloodlettings to drain both their bruised bodies of accumulated poisons. 

Merlin knows this has to happen. He likes seeing Will this way, anyhow, up on his toes and full of fire, snappy and uncompromising, ready to shred Merlin's illusions and evasions and excuses as if they were so many sheets of 1500 year-old parchment. Will in a fight is as graceful as a fish in the water, or a bird in the air, balletic and agile, strikingly at home, a creature in its element, and Merlin loves watching the display, for all that it means he sometimes gets bitten for coming too close.

It’s not the end of the world. They have both known how to fight with each other for a long time. And Merlin - for whom a row with anybody else has always been tedious, uncomfortable, a bothersome disruption - Merlin does not mind rowing with Will. Rowing with Will is just like getting his exercise. It’s natural, and familiar, and comfortable, in its way, and everything is exactly where it’s supposed to be, in those tinderbox moments, even if "where it’s supposed to be" is the two of them having an absolute cow at each other in the kitchen while the rest of their friends sit in the living room trading wide-eyed stares and silently debating whether or not they should risk edging sideways out the back door.

Merlin reminds himself that there’s no need to worry. The other thing he learned from Gaius is that sometimes a poorly healed fracture needs to be snapped again in order to set up properly. 

Merlin wants his relationship with Will to set up properly. He’s willing to break a few bones to make it happen.

***

It takes a full year for the cast to come off.

It’s summer again by the time the two of them get down to the marrow of the matter, to the tension undergirding all of their arguments, to the knot of grass clinging stubborn and tenacious to the cracks at the heart of the concrete. The atmosphere in the flat is hot and heavy, even with all the windows thrown wide open, the air outside stagnant and swollen with the promise of rain.

“Why did you do it?”

Will doesn’t answer Merlin’s question right away. They’ve just finished (or maybe are _about_ to finish, Merlin thinks, feeling strangely anticipatory, as if something tentative and hopeful is hovering just out of sight) a spectacular squabble, and the kitchen in which they sit seems to be sagging, unsupported in the yellowish gloom, the painted cabinetry as tired as they are.

“I left you,” Merlin continues. The shameful taste of the truth burns on the way down, but he swallows it willingly. _Be better,_ he reminds himself. _Be braver._ “I was afraid to tell you before I left. I was afraid to send word after I’d gone. I never said goodbye. I didn’t ask my mother to relay any message.”

Will says nothing. Merlin refuses to interpret this as permission to stop talking. “I let people line up to die for something I could have done myself. I protected my secret at everyone else’s expense. I hid my magic behind our neighbors. I got you killed.” Merlin takes a deep breath. “I never said I was sorry.”

Will’s fingers trace an absent circle on the table. “Are you?”

Merlin's heart clenches in the grip of one shame-fisted hand. He hates that Will even has to ask that question, but he knows he can only blame himself. Merlin could apologize for 1500 years and still never explain how sorry he is. He never breathed a word of it to anyone, but there was a part of him, all those years ago, that was _relieved_ to bargain his life away to Nimueh. He’d earned that punishment, he knew. It was a just price. 

“Yes," he says, choosing simple honesty. “I was wretched to you, and you saved my life. I left you, and you lied for me. You - ” Merlin’s throat threatens to close; he forces himself to finish. _Be_ _better_ , he tells himself. _Braver._ “I would never have asked you for that, Will. Never. I didn’t deserve it.”

Will doesn’t say anything. He is not looking at Merlin, exactly, but at the refrigerator behind Merlin’s chair, which hums in the quiet kitchen, blissfully unaware of the weighty words being exchanged in its shadow. There’s a photo of Will and Merlin stuck to the door now, added last month, and Merlin still feels strange, when he pulls out a jug of milk in the morning and sees Will’s smiling face hanging there. 

Merlin has never had a picture of Will before. He has never seen Will’s face outside the confines of his own memories.

“Well?” Merlin prods. “Am I wrong?”

“No,” Will replies, “you’re right.”

“Then why did you do it?”

Will sits up straighter, fixing Merlin with a penetratingly direct, unflinching stare, the same startlingly candid look Merlin spent lifetimes looking for in other faces. Fifteen centuries of searching later, and this one thing, it turns out, is exactly the same: Will never did have any patience for foolish questions. 

“You know why,” is all Will says.

Merlin’s throat snaps shut for good this time.

He closes his eyes, and takes a deep, wobbly breath, in through his nose, out through his mouth. Behind him, the refrigerator continues humming to itself, and the tap drips onto a stack of dirty dishes lying forgotten in the sink, and somewhere, out in the heart of the city, the first droplets of rain splatter down onto a cracked section of pavement overgrown with year-old grass.

In approximately three seconds, Merlin is going to be having a big, ugly cry in his kitchen. It’s going to be mortifying and unsightly and sort of inconvenient, really, since he is supposed to be doing the washing-up right now, and it’s going to be particularly unfortunate because Will is sitting right there, and Will might not have a freak allergy to nectarines but he does have at least a little bit of an allergy to tears - his own, mostly, though Merlin can’t imagine that Will is going to like Merlin’s very much, either, even if Merlin only ever tried to test that theory once and didn't exactly have the chance to collect any data after the fact. 

But before that wave comes crashing down, Merlin takes three bracing seconds to remind himself of something he already knows to be true: that Will is going to accept Merlin’s bawling, this time, or at least take it in stride, and that he might even pull over a chair, and tuck up his feet and have a silent sit with Merlin for the duration, because Will would have heard that calloused bone break, too, and he would have felt the sharp, misaligned pieces snap finally, blessedly back into place, and he certainly knew exactly what he was doing when he answered Merlin’s question.

 _You know why_ is as close to _I love you_ as someone with Will’s fraught history is ever going to get. 

And close enough is, for them - for now - close enough.


End file.
